Establishing a Research Program in Graduate School
If you’re anything like me, you have many research interests. This is great because you’ll never run out of research ideas. However, it may become difficult to describe your research program to others. I often find it difficult to answer the question “What are your research interests?” in a concise manner, because as mentioned, I have many! Fortunately, I was recently told that I should not see this as a problem. My research projects all connect in some way. They all have one thing in common: they all focus on intimate relationships. Thus, no matter where you are in your graduate program, study what inspires you and what is interesting to you, especially if you are like me and you enter graduate school with many research ideas under your belt. Your research interests likely connect in some way, and if they don’t, there is no problem with having a research program that focuses on multiple lines of work. Regardless of what direction you decide to take, it is worthwhile to conduct research that is novel and that would make an important contribution to the research literature. Thus, in this blog, I share tips for developing meaningful research questions. Hopefully, these tips will help you establish a program of research that you can be proud of.
Stay up to date on recent literature. You want your research to make a novel contribution. Thus, knowing what has already been done by other researchers will help. I have numerous suggestions on how to do this. Many researchers share their recent research on Twitter and on ResearchGate. If you have not already done so, I strongly recommend joining these academic communities. If you can, I would also recommend traveling to academic conferences and attending as much research talks as you can. Likewise, researchers will most likely present their recent work at conferences. Read review papers and chapters, especially any that have recently been published, and consider looking through what has been published in recent issues of journals that you would want to submit manuscripts to in the future. I would also consider taking any opportunities that come your way that would allow you to gain editorial experience. I am currently on the editorial board for Personal Relationships and Personality and Social Psychology Review. The chances to help review a paper are scarce at times, but I have always found it worthwhile to accept the invitation to review a recently submitted manuscript when it comes my way.
Think about potential moderators and mediators. Think about this as you engage in any of the above suggestions (e.g., while reading a review paper or listening to a research talk) or right after you complete a project and are thinking about what your results mean. What is a variable that you could have examined as a moderator or as a mediator, but that you didn’t?
Think about methodological limitations. Regarding the published literature or your own research, there may be some methodological limitations that could be addressed in future work. For example, might you address your research question or similar research questions via other research designs (e.g., a longitudinal research design)? Is there a particular statistical technique that you could utilize with a larger sample size (or with dyadic data if doing relationships research) that would allow you to make stronger conclusions? Are there any populations that are underrepresented, and that you could aim to recruit in future work?
Get feedback from others. You are only one person, with one brain. Thus, it is always going to be helpful to seek the perspectives of others. Find opportunities to present your research. If you are not able to attend conferences, consider presenting your recent research at a lab meeting, Brown Bag, or other speaker series in your department. If you can attend conferences, apply to present your work. I have developed new research ideas many times from conversations that I’ve had with people at conferences that stop by my poster. Take advantage of any opportunity you get to gather feedback from others.
If like me, you are at the part of graduate school where you must start to think about how you will communicate your research program to others (i.e., prior to entering the academic job market), take the time to think about how your research projects are related to each other. As mentioned previously, there most likely is a connection there, and it is important for you to be able to highlight it. Your research program should tell a story, and it should be clear what your values are. Importantly, you should know the direction that you would like to take your research in the future, which the tips above should hopefully help you think about as well.
About the Author
Melanie Reyes is a 4th-year Experimental Psychology Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Psychology at Saint Louis University with a concentration in Social Psychology. As mentioned in her blog, Melanie has many research interests, but she mainly studies how romantic couples can maintain satisfying sexual relationships. Specifically, she is interested in how sexual desire and sexual satisfaction can be enhanced, especially during circumstances that may undermine relational stability, such as decreases in sexual desire, mismatches in sexual desire, sexual disagreements, and sexual dysfunction.
